Nomura chairman advises China to focus on debt issue

Taking Japan's experience as a reference, China should tackle with the debt issue as soon as possible to avoid further risks, Nobuyuki Koga, chairman of Nomura Holdings, told CGTN in an interview on the sidelines of the China Development Forum.

Japan had gone through rounds of debt problems but it did not respond to them until its economic bubble burst in the 1990s. It had thereforemissed windows of opportunity for corrective actions, Koga said, added that debt issues should betackled when economic growth is still high.

Due to low economic growth, debt problems worsened and Japan had to take a longer time to fix them, he said.

Now China still has more room for growth but if China missed the window to fix its debt issues in time, the risks could be built up further, he said.

As for the opening up of China's finance sector, Koga expected the country to launch more policy clarity and more quickly on the yuan's globalization since global investors need more channels to enter yuan-denominated trading.

After China announced last year thescrapping of the stake limit for foreign financial ventures in China, Nomura filed for a new securities firm in China with a controlling stake.

He also said that when the global policy environment is murky, China's opening-up policy sent a positive signal.

Nomura predicted the world economy will grow by 3.2 percent in 2019 and 3.5 percent in 2020.

(CGTN)